The fourth round of the 2002 UIM Class 1 World Offshore Powerboat Championship in Oslo saw Norway's Bjorn Rune Gjelsten and Britain's Steve Curtis take their third consecutive victory.
The fourth round of the 2002 UIM Class 1 World Offshore Powerboat Championship in Oslo on Sunday, 11 August 2002 saw Norway’s Bjorn Rune Gjelsten and Britain’s Steve Curtis drive Spirit of Norway to its third consecutive victory. This winning result also extends their championship lead over Victory 7, lying second on the table, to a massive 22 points.
Spirit of Norway got off to a quick start leading the fleet through an extremely narrow 50-metre passage between two lighthouses and never looked back. The result also gave the winning pair the European offshore title in an event marking the halfway stage of the 2002 Class I season. Second place went to Australia’s Riviera driven by Bill Barry-Cotter and Peter McGrath. This was not only their first trip to the winner’s podium it was also just reward after finishing fourth in the British Grand Prix at Plymouth three weeks earlier.
Norway’s Andreas Ugland filled third slot with former Class 1 World Champion Randy Scism of the United States in the diesel-powered Jotun. This was particularly rewarding after Jotun suffered a spate of early season mechanical problems and the loss to injury of regular throttleman Jann Hillestad. It appears, however, that the driving duo of Ugland and Scism found its form in front of this partisan Norwegian crowd. Both of the two Class 1 racing boats from Dubai, Victory 7 driven by Ali Nasser and Ali Al Qama, and Victory 1 of Saeed H. Al-Tayer and Mohammed Al Marri, had problems. Victory 7 retired on the third lap with a broken flywheel. After holding second slot for much of the race, Victory 1 blew a water hose that resulted in a flooded engine bay, but still managed to limp home in fourth.
The Championship now moves to Izmir for the Turkish Grand Prix in September
